


In the Dark I Know That You Do

by foramomentonly



Series: I Want You To Love Me [1]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Malex, Maria DeLuca is a Good Friend, Minor Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, miluca
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:02:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23977894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foramomentonly/pseuds/foramomentonly
Summary: I have a headcanon that Alex slept with a photographer overseas and, as a result, some tiny art gallery in New York is displaying artfully erotic black and white photographs of him. He signed the release form when it dropped in his inbox because the pictures made him feel powerful and sexy, and he figures no one he knows will ever see them.Then I thought: What if Michael sees them?
Relationships: Alex Manes/Original Male Character(s), Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, Max Evans/Liz Ortecho, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: I Want You To Love Me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1865350
Comments: 54
Kudos: 246





	In the Dark I Know That You Do

**Author's Note:**

> I feel the need to say that this fic, and all my other fics, like my blog, is Maria-friendly. Just putting that out there.
> 
> Title is lyrics from "I Want You To Love Me" by Fiona Apple.

_Alex hears a soft, shuttering click and turns his head._

_“This okay?” Josué asks, lowering the camera from his face and smiling softly. “You’re just—so fucking gorgeous, man.”_

_He’s squatting naked across the room, just returned from the studio’s tiny bathroom. His thighs are thick and meaty, the muscles corded as they support the weight of his body. The sight of them makes Alex burn, makes the vivid memory of him grinding down on Alex’s cock, riding him single-mindedly as Alex gripped those same thighs tight flood his senses. Alex feels weightless, somehow simultaneously above his body, and very much in it; he feels every scratch of the stiff sheets underneath him, every delicious ache from the evening’s activities, but they only serve to elevate this heightened feeling that Alex is good and right and glorious. Alex laughs, runs a teasing hand up the length of his own naked torso, his fingers catching in his dog tags._

_“It’s okay,” he says, and Josué grins, raising his camera again, the lens re-focusing and the rapid-fire, fluttering click resuming._

_Alex stares down the lens, willing the camera to stop time, to capture and hold him in this moment and this feeling forever and for real. He’s twenty years old; he’s free, he’s whole, and he’s alive within himself for maybe the second time in his godforsaken life, since the moment time failed to stop in the first place and Jesse Manes had crashed into the shed and into Alex’s sacred space, defiling it and him and the only thing that had ever felt right to him. The only person. Because time, unfortunately, doesn’t work like that._

* * *

Alex hears the soft buzz of his phone vibrate on the wooden table and looks down.

“Shit,” he breathes, picking up his phone and staring at the name and subject line next to the little e-mail icon: _Josué Medina, Photo Release_.

“Is something wrong?” Maria asks from across the table, and five pairs of inquisitive eyes focus in his direction.

They didn’t plan this gathering, but Michael, Isobel, Max, and Liz were having a drink when Alex wandered into the Pony, and it seemed rude not to sit with them. Traffic petered out as the night went on, and Maria eventually joined them, and before he knew it Alex is nursing his third beer at a reclaimed wood table with five people who’ve been in his personal orbit for so long that it never occurred to him they haven’t actually spent much time together as a group. It’s awkward.

“Who’s José Medina?” Isobel asks, leaning shamelessly into Alex’s shoulder to better read his phone screen. Max, sitting on her other side, pulls her back.

“Iz, personal privacy?” he chides.

“It’s Ho-sway,” Alex corrects, sounding the name out phonetically. “And he’s someone I knew—Jesus, seven years ago?”

“Oooh,” Isobel drawls, “so he’s an ex.”

“He’s not an ex. He was—”

“An itch?” she supplies, and Alex kind of hates her.

“Sure,” he says, rolling his eyes and pretending to miss the way Michael’s briefly flash with something unreadable when they cross gazes across the table.

“So, this is a booty call?” Liz asks, chin in her hands and eyelashes fluttering suggestively. “Is he passing through town and never quite got you out of his system?” 

Alex forgives her much easier; her blood is basically tequila at this point in the night.

“Seven years ago,” Maria cuts in, redirecting the conversation kindly. “You were overseas at that point, right? First tour?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I was on leave in Italy. He was—well, is a photographer, from the looks of the e-mail, but at the time he was just a student. I don’t know why he’s sending me a release form.”

Alex scans the e-mail. It’s brief pleasantries and apologies for popping up unannounced in Alex’s inbox, all written with that easy, magnetic confidence that drew Alex in so many years ago. And then there’s the ask:

_There’s a call for submissions for this arthouse photo book on queer military personnel as erotic subject. It’s not fetish; it’s art. It’s a tiny press and less than fifty people will ever see it, but it would be a big deal for me. I want to submit the photo attached and I need your consent. I know it’s intimate and I understand if you aren’t comfortable. But a guy can try, right? If it helps, it’s just for us, you know? It’s not going mainstream anytime soon._

Alex doesn’t understand half of what he’s reading; well, he’s unfortunately very familiar with the dark side of fetish since he lost part of a limb and gained a prosthesis. It’s the reason he’ll never re-activate his Grindr account. But the rest goes completely over his head, so he just taps the icon to open the attached image file.

It’s. 

It’s intimate, all right. 

Erotic, for sure, though the image stops short of full nudity. 

And, before he can really fully process what he sees, it’s tugged out of his hand by Isobel’s bony fingers.

* * *

Michael is trying to focus on the conversation around him—on Maria, beautiful and loose by his side; on Max, reserved, but happy, flanked by his best girls; and decidedly _not_ on Alex, staring at his phone with a dazed expression, lips parted softly and quirked in a barely-there smile. He shouldn’t care that Alex is receiving an email from a long-lost fling, or that he’s staring at said email as though transported. Michael is so fixed on _not_ watching Alex out of the corner of his eye that he misses Isobel leaning over to pluck Alex’s phone out of his loose grip, and jumps at Alex’s cry of protest.

“Excuse me!” Alex says, turning towards her incredulously, but making no move to take his phone back.

“Damn, Alex,” Isobel whistles, tapping at his phone with two fingers to enlarge and then zoom in on the screen. “Save a horse, ride an Airman.”

Alex rolls his eyes, but there’s a proud, playful smirk pulling at his lips.

“Lemme see!” Liz cries, reaching across Max for the phone. Max looks back and forth between Liz’s grabby hands and Isobel sliding the phone her way, then shoots Alex a plaintive, deer-in-headlights look.

Alex shrugs.

“Isobel probably already forwarded it herself,” he says easily, and Isobel nods shamelessly.

Liz picks up the phone eagerly, mouth dropping open in an exaggerated grin, hand on her chest, faux-scandalized. Michael watches Max’s eyes dart over in curiosity, then quickly away again, back straightening and eyes fixed forward. He coughs gruffly.

Liz passes the phone across the table to Maria. Maria hesitates, looks questioningly at Alex.

“It really is fine,” he assures her, eyes sliding to meet Michael’s gaze next and raising a brow, almost in a challenge. Michael gazes over Maria’s shoulder and inhales sharply.

The image is in black and white, maybe so it will pass as high art rather than cheap erotica. Though Alex in the picture looks anything but cheap. He looks—He looks fucking _sinful_. He’s lying on his back on a small, messy pallet bed in what looks like a sparsely-furnished studio apartment, clearly post-coital. His hair is short and messy, soft tendrils sticking out at wild angles. He’s clearly naked, but his closer leg is bent at the knee, foot planted on the mattress, preserving some semblance of modesty. Michael notices with startling clarity a small bead of sweat caught mid-roll down the crease of his hip. One arm is thrown over his head languorously, the other resting on his chest, long fingers tangled in his dog tags. He’s thin, the outline of his ribs visible thanks to the stretch of his arm, but his body is toned and tight, the small swell of his bicep and the curve of his quad and calf muscles evident even at a distance. His head is turned towards the camera, dark, hooded eyes gazing directly down the lens, full lips quirked as though in acknowledgment of his audience. 

It’s the expression that truly unsettles Michael. He knows that look. Intimately. Has spent hours and days and years, a whole lifetime coaxing that look onto Alex’s face with his hands, his mouth, his reverent touch, and all the other ways he’s pressed unspoken truths into Alex’s skin. Alex is at peace, lazy and comfortable and confident in his body, in its form and how he’s using it. This is an Alex blissfully alive and shameless in his own skin, absent the unrelenting control with which he holds himself back, the careful disassociation and denial of his own needs and desires. This is Alex basking in himself rather than swallowing himself whole. It’s intimate and sexy and, until now, Michael had thought only he had seen Alex like this. Only he had _earned_ it.

Michael tears his eyes away from the screen, away from an Alex that’s no longer just his to focus on an Alex that isn’t his at all.

“So, this guy wants to display it or something?” Liz asks.

“Sort of,” Alex says. “There’s some kind of art book he wants to submit it to.”

“Would you get paid?” Maria asks, and Alex snorts, taking his phone back from her when she holds it out to him. 

“I posed for it for free, so I think that window is closed.”

“So you knew he was taking it?” Michael asks abruptly, and Alex furrows his brow.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. 

Michael is suddenly aware of several pairs of eyes on him, and he nods hastily and stammers, “Good. You know. That you weren’t—that you didn’t _not_ know.”

“So what are you gonna do?” Isobel asks, examining her manicure. She seems bored with the conversation now that there’s nothing in front of her to ogle. 

Alex takes a breath, looks down at his screen again.

“I’m gonna sign the form,” he breathes, and Liz actually claps in delight.

“You sure?” Michael can’t stop himself from asking, even as Maria kicks him with the heel of her boot under the table. “Doesn’t seem like something you’d be into, is all.”

Alex narrows his eyes and quirks his lips teasingly, but there’s a bite in the tone of his voice when he asks, “You trying to slut-shame me, Guerin?”

“Never,” he drawls in return. 

Their eyes lock and their smiles slowly fade. 

“I would never,” Michael adds, softer and more sincere. Alex nods once, looks away.

“It’s a gorgeous photograph, Alex,” Maria says, smiling warmly at him. “If you want to share it with the world, I say go for it.”

“And _I_ say let’s go for another round,” Isobel declares, holding up her empty glass, officially over it. “Michael, I believe this one is yours?”

“It’s mine, actually,” Alex says easily, effectively ending the conversation. He grips the table for support as he slides out of his chair and stands, pocketing his phone as he goes. “I’ll be right back.”

* * *

They’re saying hasty good-byes in the parking lot, Liz and Isobel piling into Max’s car, Max extremely sober behind the wheel. Maria heads back inside to help her staff close up, and Michael stands quietly with Alex, waiting on his rideshare.

“You seem pretty sober to me,” Michael comments, pulling his jacket tighter around his torso.

“I’m tired,” Alex admits, “and my leg is bothering me. It’s just easier for tonight. I’ll pick up my car tomorrow.”

He glances sideways at Michael.

“You don’t have to stand out here with me,” he says. “Go inside and help Maria.”

“Why’re you releasing that picture?” Michael blurts, not realizing the words he’s speaking until they’re out there, irretrievable, and Alex turns slowly to consider him.

“I liked remembering how I felt when Josué took it. I felt free,” he says quietly, and Michael is shocked he’s even deigning to answer. “I was far away from Roswell and everyone in it. I felt strong, like I was in control for once. Maybe if the photo’s out there, that feeling won’t seem so far away.” He smiles mischievously. “And, I mean, I looked _good_. Hadn’t been too long since basic.”

Michael catches his gaze, holds it.

“Did I make you feel free?”

Alex’s smile is small, but genuine.

“You used to,” he breathes. “For awhile you were the only thing that made me feel that way.” 

Michael feels his whole body release, as though he’d been holding in a breath, clenching every single muscle unconsciously. Alex shakes his head.

“What?”

“That’s too much pressure,” he says. “No one person can be everything good for someone else.”

Michael looks down and kicks at the dust and grime of the parking lot with his boot, and thinks of Maria.

“I told you I couldn’t be your medicine,” Alex continues, “but I think I was doing the same thing to you. Maybe that’s why I reacted they way I did when you started acting out.”

They let his confession hang in the air between them before Michael, now in possession of a one-track mind apparently, speaks.

“So you aren’t worried someone you know is gonna see it?” Michael asks softly.

Alex shakes his head.

“That’s why it feels safe,” he says. “New York, the 'art scene.' That’s a whole nother world.”

Michael nods, stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

“So, what if someone _wanted_ to see it?”

Alex looks at him blankly.

“What if _I_ wanted to buy a copy?” Michael explains. “I mean, you’re right. You _were_ in spectacular shape back then.”

Alex bursts out laughing.

“Not like now,” Michael goes on, grinning as Alex’s shoulders shake. “You really let yourself go, private.”

The silence between them as their laughter dies is the most comfortable of the night.

“I’m okay with that,” Alex murmurs as a car pulls into the lot and a notification pings on his phone. “Good luck tracking it down, though.”

“Alex?” the driver of the car asks, rolling her window down an inch.

“Yeah,” Alex says, and pulls the car door open.

“Night, Guerin.”

“Sweet dreams, Fabio.”

It takes Michael three months to find the book after Alex mentions that it's out and his photo made the cut, and it takes some intense eBay stalking at that, plus he's out $60— _indie press, my ass_ , he thinks as he clicks purchase. 

  
  
  



End file.
